Crypto exchange Binance seeks to resume deposits and withdrawals on May 14

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Mon, 13 May 2019, 07:53 am UTC

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is aiming to resume deposits and withdrawals on Tuesday, May 14, founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao said in an online post.

The exchange suffered a major hack last week in which it lost 7000 BTC (approximately $40 million). Binance had said that it will use the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU fund) for fully covering the losses.

Following the hack, Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals and said that it will conduct a thorough security review of all parts of its systems and data.

In a previous update on the incident, Zhao had revealed the plans to significantly revamp some of Binance’s security measures, procedures, and practices.

In the latest update dated May 12, Zhao said that the team has made “some significant overhauls to our system, with a large number of advanced security features added and/or completely re-architected.”

“We aim to fully resume deposits and withdrawals on Tuesday. The time will be communicated at a later stage, depending on how the testing goes. This upgrade will require a trading halt,” he said, adding that a more detailed update will be published once Binance fully resumes all operations.

Days before the hack took place, blockchain security firm CipherTrace published a report stating that criminals stole more than $356 million from cryptocurrency exchanges and infrastructure in the first quarter of 2019. It also clarified that the said amount of $356 million only represents the losses that are “visible,” adding that cryptocurrency thefts, scams, and fraud could tally more than $1.2 billion in first quarter 2019.